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On-Demand Customer Service - part 2

Does
it mean the end of the contact center as we know it or will it prove to be the catalyst
to a new level of evolution?

Part 2

Will Contact Centers Become Obsolete or
Evolve to a New Level?

(In our
previous column, we examined the effects of the on-demand economy on customer
service. This follow-up takes a closer look at what the impact of technology might
have on the contact center environment, specifically staffing)

Over the past
several years, it’s become a trend for solution providers to engage in morbid
editorial speculation on the fate of the contact center. “It looks like the call center’s days are numbered,” is
the opening sentence of one recent study by Xerox. Another white paper from IntelliResponse
(now [24/7]) is boldly headlined “Death of the Contact Center”, accompanied by
a mournfully illustrated tombstone. “The call center and contact center as we
know them today are finished” is the stated premise of a blog from Creative Virtual.

Let’s not build a false level of suspense. When you read
through any of the above-cited articles, these predictions are the opening
gambits in discussions on how to update contact center priorities to meet
evolving customer needs. Common threads include the need to dramatically
improve self-service and augment the efforts of live reps with intelligent
virtual agents by implementing superior automated systems. The ultimate vision
is an era where bots and informed agents can deliver consistently excellent
customer experiences.

One element that is seldom discussed is how successful
technology implementation will affect the employment of agents. What will
happen to those who now work both on-staff in onsite contact centers and as
contractors in either offshore or home-based offices? Other questions might
include: How will companies transition between providing virtual and live
support? How will the roles of agents be changing? What will the ramifications
be in scheduling today’s evolving workforce?

First,
let’s talk about numbers. An Oxford University/Deloitte study shows customer
service reps have a 91% likelihood of becoming automated and call center
workers a likelihood of 75%, making them among the top 50 jobs most likely to
be lost. Fortune magazine pegs it even higher for those they term as
“telemarketers”.

The
specter of automation taking jobs from live agents is already becoming a
reality in one of the world’s hottest outsourcing destinations. The Wall Street Journal reported an increasing number of the
Philippines’ 1.2 million call-center workers are in danger of having their jobs
outsourced to customer service robots. Bots are starting to displace some
humans from low-end tasks such as monitoring the performance of digital networks,
according to the IT and Business Process Association of the Philippines. An
association executive, Benedict Hernandez, stated, “To survive, the industry needs to
upgrade its skills—and fast”.

The challenge
will be to develop education programs that can produce skilled workers for a
more sophisticated range of tasks, such as managing content on websites or
handling customer relations via online chat.“Just one tenth of our 5,000 employees are answering
phones, said Brian Maddock, CEO ofTaskUs, a U.S.-based outsourcing company that
operates in the Philippines. This
reflects an industrywide trend. A decade
ago, nearly all Philippine outsourcing work was phone-based. Now, it is just
60%, a figure that is likely to keep declining.

Chicago-based
law firm Baker
& McKenzie, which employs 900 people in Manila performing
tasks from billing to marketing, sees automation as an opportunity, not a
threat. “It drives outsourcing upmarket and allows workers to advance their
careers and demand higher salaries, said Gabriel Pardo, the firm’s executive director
of outsourcing operations. “As automation frees employees from low-end tasks,
we’re entrusting them with more challenging work, such as managing clients’ intellectual-property portfolios.”

The move to automation is gathering
steam in the US as well. According to a report in CIO magazine, companies are implementing
technology solutions capable of handling an infinite number of incoming customer
questions such as artificial intelligence chatbots, computer programs designed
to simulate conversation with human users—to respond to customer queries. Nearshore America reported earlier this year that Sprint
Corp eliminated as many as 2,500 call center jobs, as the fourth largest U.S.
telecom carrier deployed more self-help apps to answer customer queries. Call
centers were closed in Texas, Virginia, and Tennessee and downsized in Colorado
and Sprint’s home city of Overland Park, KS.

“Seamless, personalized smart assistants
will increasingly automate everything the current contact center offers,” wrote Chris Ezekiel, CEO of Creative Virtual. “There will be a
transition to more automation, and combining virtual and real support with a
central knowledge management and workflow platform will give companies the best
path to manage that transition.Right now, the combination of natural language virtual agents
with live chat or web chat can give customers the effortless interactions they
want.”

With
automated systems becoming increasingly proficient in interpreting tone,
language, and quicker response, machines will be able to take on an expanding
range of customer concerns. “Machine learning is the enabler,” said Jeff
Beelman, senior director for contact center solutions at General Dynamics
Information Technology in a recent post in the company’s
GovTech Works newsletter. “Today, the machine can hear the nuance in how a
person asks a question. It can interpret the slang. It can hear the same
question asked in a number of different
ways and still be able to understand it.”

When
the level of technology that significantly reduces call volume becomes widely
available, how will that affect the responsibilities of live agents? Xerox
foresees that the next generation of reps will be both technologically
empowered to find answers more quickly, and able to focus on adding value at
every turn. Mike Bourke SVP and GM for Workforce Optimization for Aspect
expressed a similar perspective in a recent blog. “Since 81% of
customers prefer self-service to agent-assisted
service, the simpler work will go to automated self-service, and the more
complex tasks will go to agents.”

Helping agents make the transition from
gatekeepers to providers of high-touch, high-value service will require
companies to change the way they look at the role. Businesses will need to
commit to more selective hiring processes,
revamped training procedures, and putting greater emphasis on development. Agents
will need to be ready to tackle the most challenging issues and positioned to
pinpoint what went wrong. It's therefore not surprising that in the next ten years, the average customer service agent
will not only need to have a much wider range of skills but will have to adapt
to changes in technology, from becoming experts in apps and social networks to
utilizing the increasing range of data on their CRM system. As the number of
available positions continues to diminish, many observers believe that pay
rates will increase for the higher level performers.

Even as the ranks of front line personnel become leaner, most
companies will still need to address the ongoing issue of agent scheduling. Although self-service applications are rapidly
gaining traction, firms are still in the positon
of having to ensure they have adequate capacity to serve demand while
controlling costs. However, in certain call center environments, there is a power
shift. Instead of ordering staff or independent contractors to be available at appointed times, some
organizations are allowing agents to create their schedules, choosing whether
and when to work based on personal preferences.

Contact
center operations have the option of implementing intelligent agent interfaces
capable of determining and displaying all available options to each agent based
upon their unique profile. Such solutions incorporate the latest forecast and
schedule changes. Companies that have leveraged intelligent schedule change,
empowerment technology, such as Workflex Solutions, have reported dramatic improvements in agent satisfaction
and intraday staffing performance as well as a reduction in administrative
overhead. Self-scheduling is yet another step in the ongoing process of
creating true on-demand contact centers.

In an industry where predictions about the future are made on
an almost daily basis, it’s nearly impossible to pinpoint whose crystal ball is
the clearest. But there
are some undeniable truths:

The on-demand economy
has made an immediate impact on customer service that has long-term
repercussions.

Consumers now expect
answers to their inquiries that are faster and more accurate than ever before.

Organizations are
struggling to find the right combination of technology and human capital to
keep up with the constantly changing needs of their customers while keeping
costs in check.

The merging of
intelligent software with the knowledge of human agents is well already under
way.

Automated systems, driven
by machine learning, artificial intelligence and natural language powered
virtual assistants, will grow exponentially over the next few years.